His woolly grey hair, short thick body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself.

Martha spouted off a long message to the gnome, including all the details of my injuries, precisely where I was, and who Martha was and her son Helmut. When she asked the gnome to repeat the message, he got it all mixed up, and so she did it again and made it longer, but he still got it all mixed up, and so they went back and forth, and finally Martha lost patience and threw him out the window. The gnome scurried away chanting, “Red for message! Red for message!

Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn."Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods...

You don't pity a warrior for her scars, because scars are proof of survival and victory.

A maid’s yard, house, wardrobe, fridge, etc. sometimes also serve as her master’s dustbin or dumpsite.

Some people who have been working out regularly for months or even years are still out of shape because the number of cheat days they have in a week exceeds six.

Most people do kiss and tell; most of them just don’t tell many people.

Unless they are off duty, no matter how wide it is, and even when it is sincere, a smile seems fake if the job description of the person who is smiling includes smiling.

You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.

More often than not, an inspirational or motivational speaker is someone who makes money from telling us that we can do all of the things that we can do … and pretty much all of the things that we cannot do.